On ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Priebus first said he would not respond to the comments and seconds later launched into a personal attack on Reid:

PRIEBUS: As far as Harry Reid is concerned, listen, I know you might want to go down that road, I’m not going to respond to a dirty liar, who hasn’t filed a single page of tax returns himself, complains about people with money, but lives in the Ritz-Carlton here down the street. So if that’s on the agenda, I’m not going to go there. This is just a made-up issue. The fact that we’re going to spend any time talking about it is just ridiculous.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You say you’re not gonna respond, but you just called him “a dirty liar.” You stand by that? You think Harry Reid is a “dirty liar?”

PRIEBUS: I just said it.

Watch the video:

Assuming Priebus meant to say that Reid has not publicly released his tax returns, it is worth noting that given the level of the office, most successful presidential nominees have released their tax returns since the 1970s. The same tradition does not apply to those in Congress and Reid has never been a presidential candidate.

Reid, citing an anonymous source, claimed this week that Romney may not have paid any taxes for 10 years.

On Friday, Romney himself dismissed Reid’s attacks, lamenting the tone of the campaign. Hesaid “I had hoped it would be a debate about the direction of the country. What we’re seeing instead is one attack after the other — misleading, false attacks.”